Campus News

UB faculty featured in Kleinhans concert

Kleinhans Music Hall.

The April 3 concert will be the first time the Music in Buffalo's Historic Places series has been at Kleinhans Music Hall.

By SUE WUETCHER

Published March 20, 2014 This content is archived.

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“The soaring interior of the Eliel and Eero Saarinen-designed Kleinhans Music Hall will serve as a fitting backdrop for Berio’s music, so rich in variety and dramatic character. ”
Eric Huebner, assistant professor
Department of Music

Five UB faculty members will take the main stage at the landmark Kleinhans Music Hall on April 3 for a concert featuring the music of the late Italian modernist composer Luciano Berio.

In the concert, part of the Music in Buffalo’s Historic Places series, Department of Music faculty members Yuki Numata Resnick (violin), Jonathan Golove (cello), Jean Kopperud (clarinet), Eric Huebner (piano) and Jon Nelson (trumpet) will perform selections of Berio’s sequenzas for solo instruments. The audience will be invited to sit on the Kleinhans’ stage — “where the Buffalo Philharmonic members sit” — a unique vantage point from which “to witness up close the performance of these incredibly virtuosic pieces,” says Huebner, assistant professor of music and series director.

For tickets and information, visit: http://mbhp.ticketleap.com

The concert is co-produced with the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music at UB, Kleinhans Music Hall and the UB School of Architecture and Planning.

Huebner calls Berio was one of the foremost composers of the 20th-century, with his sequenzas “widely regarded as among the greatest and most influential works written for solo instruments in the last 50 years.”

The five sequenzas on this program span Berio’s career, from his Sequenza IV for piano, composed in 1965, to one of his last works, the Sequenza XIV for cello, completed in 2002. The program also includes sequenzas VIII for violin and IX for clarinet (written in 1976 and 1980, respectively) and concludes with Sequenza X, composed in 1984 for trumpet with piano resonance.

The concert is the first in the series to be presented at Kleinhans, notes Huebner, who also performs with the New York Philharmonic.

“The soaring interior of the Eliel and Eero Saarinen-designed Kleinhans Music Hall will serve as a fitting backdrop for Berio’s music, so rich in variety and dramatic character,” he says. “Much as the Saarinens’ designs continue to be a source of inspiration in the field of architecture, Berio’s music has inspired generations of composers looking to push traditional instruments to their expressive limits.”

Other Buffalo Historic Places’ concerts have taken place at the Greatbatch Pavilion at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House Complex and in the lobby of One M&T Plaza, the Minoru Yamasaki-designed corporate headquarters of M&T Bank in downtown Buffalo.

The Music in Buffalo’s Historic Places series was launched to present high-quality music programming in places of civic, historic and architectural significance in Buffalo, Huebner says.